NDG entrance to 15 South reopened after being blocked for years

MONTREAL - The new NDG entrance to Highway 15 South, which also leads to Highway 20 West, is the same as the old entrance.

Officials unveiled a new traffic light Friday on Girouard between Upper Lachine and Sherbrooke which permits the reopening of the entrance to cars driving south on Girouard.

The entrance had been closed for several years because Girouard had been transformed into a two-way street, with one lane on each side. It was reopened at 10 a.m. Friday for the first time since December 2010.

Southbound motorists hoping to turn left into the highway entrance had long been blocked by barricades, as the entrance became officially off-limits.

Police cruisers would still occasionally be seen using the entrance by making a hairpin turn behind the barricades, not an option for regular motorists.

Some of the barricades have been maintained, preventing access to the entrance from a previous route along de Maisonneuve westbound.

The reopening of the entrance should help alleviate traffic along St. Jacques W. and the area around Cote St. Luc and Decarie, which had become the default routes to access to Highway 20 westbound and Highway 15 southbound.

 The new route will slow northbound traffic on Girouard, which will now be subject to an extra possible red light.

The onramp to Highway 15 South was closed in December 2010 because construction crews working on the MUHC superhospital needed to lay sewer mains and underground water connections to the hospital campus. That meant closing other routes drivers normally used to go from St. Henri to NDG, and as a workaround the bottom section of Girouard Ave., which had been one-way south, was turned into a two-direction street.

NDG residents who have had to detour 1.5 km to the north for the past three years are glad they will finally be able to get on the 15 South -- but they will face another obstacle soon.

Transport Quebec had planned to close the St. Jacques St. bridge this year in order to demolish and reconstruct it. That work has been delayed while financial regulators investigate the two companies awarded the contract to do the work, one of which has been fined repeatedly for fraud.